Books and Body Pillows: Your Valentine’s Day Reading List

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on February 12, 2010

Dateless for V-Day?

Down in the dumps?

Don’t be. Because even though all your friends and family are cavorting out on the town or in between the sheets, you have the upper hand. Their fancy dinners will last a few hours and might give them food poisoning. The book you are reading will not. A book knows how to treat you right.

The Singles Guide to Valentine’s Day Reading

The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
Curl up in a big papasan chair and realize that even though you will never have a love as pure or true as Clare and Henry, you will also never have to deal with the love of your life disappearing and then having to get their feet amputated because they time-traveled without shoes to a place that is very cold.

Erotic Poems, by e. e. cummings
There once was a time when e. e. cummings was just as alone and pent up as you are currently. Rather than pout and complain over his empty Valentine’s Day, he relieved his frustrations through provocative poetry and delightful drawings. Grab a copy, sidle up to your ever-faithful body pillow and whisper, “may i touch?”

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
I once wrote a dissertation on how Heathcliff was the original bad boy of literature. And it’s true. Drop Edward Cullen like the potato he is and revel in some true, no-apologies sexiness. You can find certain delight that your friends’ real-life relationships are not nearly so steamy, so tortured, so fraught as what was gamboling around Ms Bronte’s imagination. If only….

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels, by John Updike
Three of Updike’s four main literary themes are sex, death, and America; in two words, “Valentine’s Day.” (The fourth theme is religion, if you are interested.) I can think of no better author to spend one’s lonely V-day with. Play a fun game and see how many of the four rabbit books you can get through. Take a stiff sip of whiskey every time you read a graphic sexual reference. I bet you won’t be conscious by the time lunch rolls around.

Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
In a 1944 London, every time Tyrone Slothrop got an erection, a Blitz bomb hit. You can bet your bippy that he spent his Valentine’s Days alone… or else there would be no more London. And last time I checked, there was. So rest easy. You’re not alone. It’s you and Tyrone, royalty in the V-day Singles Club. Just don’t get too comfortable with him… or your bedroom might get blitzed. If you know what I mean.